1. Starting From Scratch: Meaningful Integration of Information Literacy through Collaborative Course and Assignment Design
Chris Sweet, Information Literacy Librarian
Meghan Burke, Assistant Professor of Sociology
LOEX Conference, 2014

2. What are some common assignment & instruction problems that drive librarians nuts?
Find and copy a print journal article
Scavenger hunts for library stuff
Teach them to find good information (but I’m going to give them everything they need).
I want them to know how to do academic research, but they don’t really need it for this class.

3. Turnabout is fair play...
What are some common disconnects between disciplinary faculty and librarians regarding assignment design and library instruction?

4. Faculty-Librarian Disconnects
Students must find and then evaluate everything ever written on a given topic and then only use the best three sources.
The primary pedagogical goals of an assignment are usually not to teach research skills or information literacy.
How students use and interpret evidence within a paper is often more important than the information itself.

5. And another thing...
“I don’t have any time for information literacy in this course because I have so much disciplinary content to cover.”

6. Course and assignment design flows from course learning outcomes
What Happens When Assignments and Courses are Collaboratively Designed?
Information literacy becomes a natural fit that enhances the course, rather than an add-on
IL becomes more of a shared responsibility between instructor and librarian
Course and assignment design flows from course learning outcomes

7. Mellon Grant Overview Brief history
Library Campus-Wide Faculty Development Survey (pedagogical goals)
CFP’s for collaborative assignment and course design
Required use of local and/or national IL standards.

8. What We Did: Assignment Grant
SOC 230: Race and Ethnic Relations
Elements: Literature review of relevant scholarship, incorporated into course papers (which were then higher quality)
Formal Assessment: content analysis of student reflection papers
Should have been a course revision

9. Assessment: Student Reflection Papers
Active revision of their thesis and argument through engagement with the literature
“Throughout the process of writing my paper, my thinking went very back and forth with how I felt about the thesis I had chosen.”
“I decided to switch my thesis back to my original idea. I feel that I found sufficient evidence to support my claim and used the evidence that supported my antithesis to provide arguments to further what I believed.”
“I knew immediately what my topic was going to be. What I did not know was how my research and the material we learned throughout this course would shape the topic and add to and change my ideas about interracial relationships.”
“…it is the first research paper that I have written here that has made me really think about my own stance on the topic.”

10. Assessment: Student Reflection Papers
Window into student research process, and how it was enhanced
“I realized that I would have to push myself not to use search engine such as Google. This was a challenge for me because this is the first time in my college career that I had to depend entirely on databases, which is a sad story in itself.”
“My writing process for this paper was unique in that this was the first time that I had several drafts of the paper prior to my final draft.”
“When I chose my sources, the annotated bibliography definitely helped, because I had to read through the full source and really analyze the source before including it in my bibliography.”
“I realized that Google search was not giving me mainly academic sources.”
“This time the research drove my paper.”

11. New Course and Course Revision
Senior Seminar and SOC 350: Advanced Race and Ethnic Relations
Lit Review: Issues and Solutions
Concept Mapping Workshop
National Information Literacy Standards for Anthropology and Sociology Students
How did the papers turn out?

12. Lit Review Concept Mapping

13. Where do we go from here? Sociology Departmental Assessment Work
Found core information literacy and writing problems that were showing up in our senior work
Developed course-level goals to implement in all classes in order to overcome them
More deliberate sequencing of IL instruction throughout the SOC major.

14. That’s all well and good, but what about stepping on toes?
Instruction Session Planning (discuss course and assignment goals first)
Instruction/Assignment follow-ups. Are they getting the results they want?
After multiple iterations of an instruction section

15. How can you do something like this without external funding?

16. Thank you! We welcome your feedback and questions.
Examples of assignments and CFP’s are available here:
Meghan Burke
Chris Sweet